Half Blood Blues Quotes

“Folks think a lifetime is a thing stretched out over years. It ain't. It can happen quick as a match in a dark room.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“It's like that, I guess, when the past come to collect what you owe.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“I guess mercy is a muscle like any other. You got to exercise it, or it just cramp right up.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“The cabbie's eyes sort of glazed over. Canada kills any conversation quick, I learned long ago. It's a little trick of mine.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“Hell," he said with a grin. "It's early yet. It's always early, while you still alive.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“What is luck but something made to run out.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“Ain't no glory made from being dependable.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“Chip said it was his piano hands - one ain't never doing the same thing as the other.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“Ain't no man can outrun his fate.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“It ain’t fair. Gifts is divided so damn unevenly. Like God just left his damn sack of talents in a ditch somewhere and said, “Go help yourselves, ladies and gents.Them’s that get there first can help themselves to the biggest ones. In every other walk of life, a jack can work to get what he want. but ain’t no amount of toil going get you a lick more talent than you born with. Geniuses ain’t made, brother, they just is. and I just was not.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“Do you still call it talent, if it blooms without any kind of nurturing? That's got to be something else.

She made talent sound like a damned insult.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“Chip recons that he is charming as hell, and who am I to poke holes in his theory. That means that sometimes lies leave his mouth dressed like truth. He just can’t help it.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“The only time I ever saw him untidy was after a fight. What a sight that was. James Bond run through a blender. You know the other fella probably got off worse.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“Her lips was hot, like the ridge of a cooking dish.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“She laughed. I closed my eyes. It sounded damn mournful, that laugh of hers echoing off the square.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“There's all sorts of ways to live, Chip. Some of them you give a lot. Some of them you take a lot. Art, jazz, it was a kind of taking. You take from the audience, you take from yourself.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“It was disgusting, all that fear”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“Turn it," Thomas said, without smiling. "Play it again.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“It's always early, while you still alive.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“I tell you what I know. The world's damn beautiful. But it's an accidental beauty. What we do, it's deliberate. It's the one damn consolation you can offer not just you own life, but other lives you ain't even met.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“He begun to tease air through the brass. At first we all just stood there with our axes at the ready, staring at him. Nothing happened. I glanced at Chip, shook my head. But then I begun to hear, like a pinprick on the air--it was that subtle--the voice of a hummingbird singing at a pitch and speed almost beyond hearing. Wasn't like nothing I ever heard before. The kid come in at a strange angle, made the notes glitter like crystal. Pausing, he took a huge breath, started playing a ear-spitting scale that drawn out the invisible phrase he'd just played.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“Today you ain't no kind of horn player you don't acknowledge some debt to Hieronymus Falk. He was one of the pioneers: a German Louis Armstrong, if you will.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“A man ain't never seen greatness till he set eyes on the likes of Armstrong. That the truth. Those hooded lids, that blinding smile: the jack was immense, majestic. But something else too: he looked brutally human, like he known suffering on its own terms. His mouth was shocking. He done wrecked his chops from the pressure of hitting all them high notes over the years. He lift a handkerchief to his mouth, wipe off a line of spittle. I seen something in him then: a sort of devastated patience, a awful tiredness. I known that look. My mama had it all her life.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“We was all of us free, brother. For that night at least, we was free.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“An ancient old raisin of a man. I”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“It don't matter about all that anyway," Armstrong added. "You think it do, but it don't. A man ain't just his one talent. Lil Louis needs you. And Jones look to you like you his brother. You got the talent of making others your kin, your blood. Music, well that's different. I reckon it got its own worth, but it ain't a man's whole life."

"Aww hell, Louis," I thought. "Ain't nothing else I want.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues